social networking

While you may have never asked yourself this question, you may have had friends or family that passed on and wondered what happens with their account now as it stands in tribute to their memory.

Facebook has recently released a feature that allows you to bequeath access to certain parts of your Facebook account (pinning a post, updating profile picture and cover photo) to a trusted friend or family member and the access is only granted to them after you have passed. You can access this option under Settings > Security > Legacy Contact.

Would you use this? Why or why not? Though it does grant someone else access to your account, it is somewhat limited and you can decide whether or not you want to allow your benefactor the ability to download your Facebook content.

Several gaming news outlets are reporting on the recent gaming outages brought on by a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack (PCGamer, Joystiq, VentureBeat | GamesBeat) perpetrated by a group calling themselves Lizard Squad. This all came to a head when the SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) President’s plane was diverted due to a bomb threat made by the same group claiming responsibility for the DDOS attacks (Gamespot, Polygon).

I’ll be following this story and making updates on it as it progresses since the FBI is now involved due to the nature of the bomb threat.

My readers, please take a moment to read all of the TOS in every single social app you have downloaded and used over the last year. This includes all of the updated TOS you automatically agree to because you’ve already had it installed. They ALL ask for some setting you’re not going to be comfortable with if you are caught up in the hysteria over the new FB messenger application.

If you are not installing the FB messenger app because of the latest and greatest in sensationalist headlines, then you should follow through and uninstall every single other app that utilizes any of your social networks (twitter, tumblr, instagram, skype etc). After you’ve done that, you should revoke all access of those applications to each other (i.e. any app that is connected to your Facebook account).

Then, if you really want to protect your privacy, you will delete your Facebook account altogether, along with every other social network profile you’ve ever created. Just don’t forget those companies still own all of the data you gave them over the last 10 years (if you’ve been on FB as long as I have). You already sold it to them when you signed up and they can do whatever they want with it whenever they want to. Most importantly, it’s their business to do just that.

If you would like an alternative, try Facebook Texting:

It is accessible via Facebook Settings (easiest way to access it is to click on the lock in the header next to the updates icon and go to “See more settings”).

Last week several news organizations including Ars Technica shared information about Facebook’s new passive listening feature.

From their report:
“Facebook has added a new feature to its mobile app as of Wednesday that uses a phone’s microphone to identify ambient TV shows, music, or movies and include them in status updates. The feature is off by default, though the app offers to turn it on in an intro screen that it pops up for users.”

This means if you use Facebook on your mobile device, you should take notice in the coming weeks and choose NOT to use this feature if you are not comfortable with it. Many of us are used to just bypassing these sorts of pop ups without a second thought. This is one you may want to pay attention to before you agree to it.

Well, it looks like I’m SXSW bound yet again this year. Still trying to find a hotel as they are all sold out and I was late to sign up – but that’s another story entirely!

While at SXSW this year I hope to not only enjoy a lot of great panels, but also recruit some of the top speakers and participants I find there to hopefully contribute to and collaborate in a virtual barcamp community I’m helping to launch. (There may even be a private rooftop party at SXSW for the chosen few *hint hint*).

If you’re a technologist who would like to connect with your peers, share your knowledge, and learn from others through teleconferences where you choose the topics to speak on and/or choose from a list of sessions led by others you wish to participate in, please contact me (diana [at] cyber-anthro.com)! We need thought leaders on all subjects who aren’t afraid to share their knowledge with the masses. Each conversation will be recorded and then posted as a podcast on our site to be shared with anyone who wishes to listen.

There is no catch to being a part of this community other than you have to participate! Only those who wish to participate in leading or joining in these conversations need apply. That said, this service will not only be free to all participants, but it will also all make all recorded sessions available to the public.

That means if you just want to listen, there is no need to join! You can visit the site, or follow the RSS/Twitter feed to hear the latest and greatest discussions on tech today. So, if there is someone you think would be great at leading and/or participating in these tech conversations, I need you to please send them my way. Otherwise, there will be no one to listen to and that just wouldn’t be any fun now would it.

I’m really hoping people in the Open Source and Fedora communities will step up and participate. This is not only a great way to get your voice heard, but it is also a great way to talk about the projects you participate in and may even help to get the word out to get other developers to join your cause.

Lastly, this isn’t just for developers. If you’re a scripter, coder, designer, or usability professional we need your voices too! The goal is to have thought leaders in all aspects of technology connecting, sharing, and learning through live audio conversations and collaborations.

We figure barcamps are very cool, but they are limited to the geographic area in which they are held. So, why not find a way for people from all over the world to participate in one without ever having to leave their desks.

I’m really stoked about this unique opportunity to bring people together from around the world to have live conversations with one another about all the wonderfully awesome things that are going on in tech today. I’m even more excited that these conversations will then be made available for FREE to anyone who wishes to listen and learn something.

If you’re willing to speak on something as early as next week and you have the perfect topic in mind (and perhaps know of a few people that can jump in on the conversation with you), I need you to contact me ASAP (diana [at] cyber-anthro.com)! We are still in the very early stages of getting the site up – but I need content to make it happen, so I need people now (who aren’t afraid to work through a few bugs with me) to help me get this going.

I’ll be heading in to Austin tomorrow to check in and get my badge before the crazy lines roll in Friday morning. Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Social Media BBQ at Emo’s. Friday I’ll start off in the Blogger’s Lounge because that’s where all the cool kids hang out. 😉 Depending on how my retrospective call at work goes (it’s the end of our agile development cycle) I hope to attend a few UX panels. You can find all the panels I’ve selected to attend on my SXSW schedule.

Saturday night the company I work for is cosponsoring a party with Tumblr, FourSquare, SoundCloud, and KickStarter at Emo’s. They are also cosponsoring the Houston@SXSW party Monday night at Hudson on Fifth. You can RSVP for that party here.

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any Austin Barcamp activities going on. If there is something going on that I don’t know about yet, please inform me! I’d like to start a discussion on the need for good designers in free and open source software development and to brainstorm ways to get designers more interested in participating!

If you can’t find me at the panels I’ve posted, the Blogger’s Lounge, or at these parties – you should be able to spot me at The Planet’s booths (303 & 305) in the tradeshow sometime Sat & Sun 12 – 6 and Monday 12 – 4. I’m told there will be sweeeeeet giveaways so I hope to see you there!

I rarely do this as I have a small place, a town home that while large in square footage with its three stories it is more vertical than horizontal, so its layout isn’t really conducive to large gatherings.

My husband and I have a roommate. She is a recent divorcee that was until last month going to school full time and due to her credit after the divorce is unable to get a place on her own at the moment. We had an extra room, so we let her rent it from us for a small fee. Well, that was until she lost her job a week before I lost mine. Now she and I spend all day lamenting over the job hunt process, its been quite a bonding experience over these last two weeks as it seems that even for her, a degreed paralegal, there are no jobs out there.

Yesterday was her birthday, and due to her job loss situation I told her she could have a party over at the house and invite a few of her friends over. This way it wasn’t expensive for anyone, and she’d still get to do SOMETHING for her birthday.

She setup the birthday invite through Facebook and made me an administrator on it because it was my house. I didn’t have a problem with this, but also didn’t much pay attention to it. It was her party she could invite who she wanted, but it was cool of her to keep me in the loop and I am glad she did. By Wednesday morning of the 10 or so people she invited over and 7 that had said yes, 6 of them changed their answer to no. I was shocked and upset for her and felt I had to fix this and fast.

While she does have her own friends, she is also friends with many of mine, so – I sent out the call and invited another 20 people through Facebook realizing that not all of them would be able to make it due to the short notice, but I had to try something! We had 12 people confirmed as of yesterday afternoon so I posted to my LiveJournal about the situation and another 4 responded to the call.

I was told by the end of the night last night that it was her best birthday ever.

Even if I had all of the phone numbers of those I invited (and I do believe I had most of them), I don’t think I would have had as much success in getting people over in such a short notice as I did using these social networking tools. As a cultural anthropologist, I still marvel at how though these tools are ever so quickly being devoured by businessness to push their goods and services they can still serve their purpose to bring people together for purely social reasons.

So, how do you bring together groups of like minded individuals in to create a mini social network within a larger one? Easy, you get someone like Jeremiah Owyang to make a post on twitter linking back to his blog on how conversations have moved to twitter then asking for a microblog roll via comments. This results in an explosion of twitter friendings going back and forth across the microblog-o-sphere giving everyone the ability to tap into and expand the social networking community that has developed within the twitter social network.

To see how one person could trigger such a movement and that so many different individuals with interests that range from academics to PR to social media can find each other because they all have 1 particular friend in common is astounding. Since about 10 this morning I have gained 24 followers and promptly followed them all back. I will continue to track the resulting friendings from this one action as well as anything new I learn from these new fritters and see how far out this reverberates. If there are others interested in doing the same or sharing some of the results of this new wave of friendings, please comment! I love doing collaborative work, especially online.